Looking Ahead

 
Many people have asked me what I plan to do after I'm finished at the Farm School.  The fact is that I have no idea, and yet I have lots of ideas!  My fellow classmates are all over the map... some have very firm ideas about what's next for them...homesteading, diversified crop production, CSA, college.  Others, like me, are in the process of exploring the seemingly endless ways that you can farm or incorporate this education into your work and personal life.  Will I return to medicine?  I'm tabling that internal debate for now.

I have always been the gal with a plan...I like to know what's next for me.  This time around, however, that's not the case and I'm trying very hard to be at peace with uncertainty.  Being here is like being a kid in a candy store; everywhere I turn there's something new and exciting to learn, and when I look at the upcoming curriculum, it just keeps getting better.

Which poses interesting challenges for me: to be okay with the unknown, to let the path unfold before me, to live in the moment, to trust the process, to throw myself into the learning without getting anxious about the future.

Several years ago, I was sitting in a professional conference that I wasn't enjoying very much. My mind started to wander...big time...and I began fantasizing about what I really wanted to do when I grew up.  I spent hours designing my dream business: a green education center, which would include an organic farm, a classroom space for cooking and wellness classes, and a retail market space.  All of this would operate on a sliding scale model designed to include all comers.  I even started drawing up crude architectural plans for the buildings and fields.  But wait...oops!  No farming or business experience. At all. Last winter, as I was rehashing this whole fantasy for the umpteenth time, a friend told me, "Hmm...you should check out the Farm School."  Oh Universe, I love you.

Speaking of business.  In December, we started a series of business planning classes with Ray Belanger of Fish Park Consulting, which turned out to be a pivotal time for me.  The initial class took me from feeling like la la la farming is fun to wow, I could actually do this.  Ray's take-home message?  With a good well thought-out business plan, you can go from an 80% chance of failure to an 80% chance of success.  I'm not sure how he's come up with those percentages, but he seems to know what he's doing.  I never thought I'd be interested in business; the difference now is that it's taken on a whole new level of relevance.

PS: I have a brand new camera! The Coolpix S3100!

An Open Letter

Dear Nikon Coolpix S3000,

Until today you've been my faithful friend.  Your slim design fit neatly into my Carhartt jacket pocket.  I could easily pull you out, take some photos, and go right back to whatever task I was performing with nary a break in the action.  Harvesting veggies, trimming sheep hooves, or picking rocks out of the fields...you were always there.  The quality of your photos was pretty good for the cost.

However, based on today's events, I would like to suggest an amendment to your "Quick Start Guide."  Although the "Guide" is useful, I see a significant oversight on your part, and its inclusion might have prevented the catastrophe I endured.

"Section G.II.a:  Additional instructions for care of your Nikon Coolpix S3000.

When arriving home tired on a Friday night after a productive week on the farm, it is important to remember to remove your new camera from your jacket pocket before attempting to do laundry. The device will not function properly after being submerged in water for the duration of the wash cycle.  Do not attempt to air dry the lithium battery or memory card...this is wishful thinking and only makes you look ridiculous. If this happens, do not attempt to call us...your warranty is completely void under these circumstances and we will make fun of you after addressing your concerns over the phone."

Nikon Coolpix, I trust that this suggested addition to the owners manual will prevent any undue suffering on the part of your future customers.  Thank you for your consideration.

Rest in peace

December

Things have gotten quieter on the farm.  The sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon.  Although still on the warm side for December, it's pretty chilly in the mornings and evenings.  The harvest is done...the last of the carrots came out of the ground this week and are safely tucked into the root cellar. 

Chores continue on a daily basis, although they've become much simpler.  No rotational grazing until the spring!  For the winter, the beef herd has been firmly ensconced in the Waslaske Barn and field, complete with a de-icer for the water trough and a space heater to keep the hose from freezing.  The barn is huge and beautiful, with plenty of room for hay storage.  The bull we rented for breeding purposes is gone, hopefully having completed his procreation duties.  They seem happy.  I know I'm anthropomorphizing, but cows are people too, right?

The sheep are living in the Upper Barn near the farmhouse.  Junior, our ram, cohabitated with them for a month.  The ladies should all be pregnant by now and will have their lambs in March.  Junior has headed back down the road to Sentinel Elm to continue his ewe-breeding "work."  It's like clubbing in New York, sheep-style.

We're still spending time outdoors, but our daily activities have transitioned to more classroom and lecture time along with a bigger focus on animal care.  Here's a sample of the week's activities:

On Tuesday, Michael Dulock, a whole-animal butcher who owns Concord Prime & Fish, came to visit.  He spent an afternoon with us demonstrating the elegant techniques involved in butchering a whole pig...from stem to stern.  He believes that you should use every possible part of the animal, and at the end of the day he had me feeling pretty passionate about pigs' feet, head cheese, and tongue.  In theory.  This was an amazingly instructive class.  Now I can tell you more than you ever wanted to know (or maybe you do!) about bacon, ham, tenderloin, pork shoulder and rib roast.

Our instructor Olivier gave us a class on cordwood, sort of an A to Z primer on the qualities of different types of wood, when to use them, how they burn, what it's like to split them, how long to dry them before burning, etc.  Who would have thought that there would be that much to talk about? 

Veterinarian Dr. Stephen Major visited to talk about the evaluation and management of sheep, goats, and horses, complete with descriptions of common ailments and basic routine care.  He returns next week to discuss cows and take us on a field trip to a nearby dairy farm.

We continue to work on the sawmill and timber frame structure.  Soon, we'll have all of the pieces cut and prepared.  Work will continue again...in April!

In the meantime, right now there's time for contemplation, reading, studying, learning, spending time with each other, cooking, and doing Zumba classes at the YMCA.  And next week, the seed catalogs arrive!

In Search of Inner Timber

We are building a hand-tooled timber frame structure.  When I say "we" I mean that Josh B. is masterminding the operation and the rest of us are eagerly measuring, squaring, marking out, sawing, drilling, chiseling and generally being in awe of this project.

Josh is a talented man.  At the Farm School, he's our program director, but he's also a stonemason, a chef, a carpenter, a disciple of the Grateful Dead, and has about as much energy as a person could possibly have.  This will be the ninth timber frame structure he's built.  It'll be a classroom and living space that will attach to the end of our currently existing tool shed on the farm.  Here's one of the plan drawings:

In our initial workshop, Josh handed us a glossary of terms, some of which I will now share with you, gentle reader:

Post and beam: A structural system whereby floor and roof loads are carried on principal timbers that may be merely stacked and fastened with hardware or may utilize timber joinery.

Joinery: The shaping of timbers where they mate to fasten or lock them.

Sills: Timbers that tie the bottom of the frame and distribute its weight along the foundation.

Tenon: The reduced end of a timber that fits into a mortise.

Mortise: The cavity that accepts the tenon. 

Square rule: A system of layout in which a smaller, perfect timber is envisioned within a rough outer timber; all joints are cut to this inner timber.  Many timbers in a Square Rule frame are interchangeable.

Rafters: The timbers spanning from eave to ridge to which the roof sheathing is attached.

Joist: The spanning timber that the floor is attached to.

Brace: A diagonal timber or a temporary piece of lumber that prevents distortion in a frame.

The wood is white pine from trees felled on the farm and milled down to size on the sawmill.  The sills, posts and beams are very heavy eight by eight by sixteen inch pieces.  With time, we'll also be milling the remaining pieces: floor and ceiling joists, rafters, braces, etc:

And into the greenhouse we go to set up our work area:

We will use no hardware.  The joinery will all fit together like puzzle pieces.  Here are the tools of the trade:

And finally, action!

I'm finding this work to be incredibly meditative.  The tunes are going, it's warm in the greenhouse, and everyone is working in companionable silence.  I feel a little bit like Michelangelo, holding my mallet and chisel and helping to create something that will eventually be a work of art.  Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea.  On the second day of work, the sun began to set and we were having a hard time seeing what we were doing. But nobody wanted to leave.

Tomorrow's another day.

Thanksgiving

In honor of Thanksgiving, I'm going to write about our recent turkey and chicken slaughters.  These have been pretty intense experiences for one who has never killed an animal before.  Although I'm not a big meat eater, I do eat poultry, and I was determined to participate.  After all, if I'm going to continue to eat meat, I want to be connected to the path that the animal follows to get to my dinner table.

If you get queasy about this stuff, now is the time to stop reading. Sorry.

The turkey slaughter happened several weeks ago, on the day of the huge October snowstorm.  The birds were enormous and numbered about twenty.  People were set up at a series of stations to perform the tasks that needed to be accomplished. First, the turkey is taken out of the pen by the feet and placed upside down in a metal cone with its head sticking out the bottom.  With a very sharp knife, the head is severed with one swipe and the blood drained into a bucket. Although now officially dead, the bird convulses for about thirty seconds. It is then placed in scalding water to loosen the feathers and transferred to a mechanical feather remover, which essentially looks like a giant salad spinner. Then the bird is placed on a table for butchering, which includes removal of the feet, neck, intestines, and internal organs.  Last stop is the kitchen, where it's submerged in ice water, cleaned more thoroughly, and frozen.

I was amazed at how quickly it happened.  Before I knew it, the birds looked like something you'd get in the grocery store.  I spent time performing each task that I described, with the exception of the actual killing.  I didn't think I was quite prepared to do it swiftly and competently, and I was content to watch and learn from others.

Fast-forward two weeks to the culling of the laying hens.  I should note that I really like the chickens. Their clucking, scratching, funny behaviors, and ceaseless laying of delicious eggs has endeared me to them.  Nonetheless, I knew that I needed to fully take part in processing this time around.  Very few of us in the group had ever done this before and there was a lot of nervous energy.

I did what I never thought I would do: slaughter a chicken.  I focused on ensuring that my cuts were clean and swift, making it as humane as possible.  As a group, we were all business, doing what needed to be done even though it was difficult.  That day we made twenty gallons of organic chicken stock.

I did this together with thoughtful, respectful people, faculty and student farmers alike.  And, unlike with the pigs and cows, which have to be sent to the slaughterhouse, we were able to see these animals through to the end right on the farm.  I found a lot of comfort in the notion that we had control over the manner and humaneness of their deaths.  Will I do it again?  I don't know, but if I plan to keep chickens for eggs, I need to know how to "dispatch" an old or sick animal.  Now I do.

Autumn on the Farm

Garlic planting

The farmhouse

Cow chores!

Horsing Around

Ah, Vermont in the late autumn. Unseasonably warm, sunny weather. Two days on Fair Winds Farm working with gorgeous, majestic Suffolk Punch draft horses.

Jay (pictured above) and Janet Bailey run draft horse workshops on their mostly animal-powered, organic farm in Brattleboro.  They have a small farm store on site and sell at the local farmers market, producing organic eggs and goat milk products. They keep chickens, sheep, goats, and pigs. They also offer sleigh rides in the wintertime on trails that wind through the woods on their forty acres. They've been working with draft horses for over 30 years, and currently have six of them.  We worked with four: Charlie, Robin, Nora, and Martin.  We spent the first hour guiding each other around using twine as reigns...definitely a throwback to childhood, but incredibly instructive and very helpful when we actually started driving the horses. Then, they familiarized us with the horses by having us lead them through an obstacle course of buckets.  Here's Keith as he leads Charlie around. Don't get stepped on!

Next step: properly harness the horses.  A metal brush is used to groom them first...this removes any dirt which might chafe under the leather and injure them, and it's a nice way to bond with the animal and get ready for the work day ahead.  They really like it.  Then the harness, hames, collar, and bridle get attached.  These horses have been so well-trained that they made it easy for us.  Below, Anna prepares to put on the harness and hames.

Over the next day and a half we learned how to give voice commands - Come Up (go), Whoa (stop), Back (back up) Haw (left), Gee (right) -  and steer with the lines, attach the farm equipment, and understand the work it takes to operate a farm with these horses. We spent a blissful amount of time on the wagons and carts riding through the pastures and woods while each one of us got practice time with the horses.  And each day, Janet made an awesome lunch with food grown on the farm along with freshly-baked bread.

The farm is also part-museum.  There are rusty old pieces of equipment scattered around the out-buildings and the fields. But don't let the rust fool you...many of these pieces are fully operational.

http://www.fairwindsfarm.org/

Chainsaw Bill

If one is to run one's own farm, one must learn the safe operation of one's chainsaw.

Let me tell you that I had no idea that learning to use a chainsaw was part of the curriculum, so I was a little nervous.  Rumors floated around about a high school driver's ed-style blood and guts video detailing the horrors of clueless, untrained chainsaw operators.  People also referred to the course instructor as 'Chainsaw Bill', which brought to mind visions of Freddy Krueger and Jason from Friday the 13th. 

'Chainsaw Bill' turned out to be veteran logger Bill Girard from The Game of Logging, which, according to the organization's website, is "widely acknowledged as the premier timber harvesting training program in the country, offering hands-on training in a competitive environment. Top instructors across the country combine demonstration with participation to teach safety, productivity, conservation and cutting techniques."  The course most definitely lived up to that description.

Bill with the students

Bill (in Kevlar gear), instructing Todd and Phil

Over the next three days, he led us through a series of lessons on everything you ever wanted to know about chainsawing: personal protective equipment, safety checks, maintenance, sharpening, the five-point tree felling plan, spring pole release, limbing, and bucking firewood.  I appreciated how hard core he was about safety.  In the end there was no scary video, but he had about a million stories of people who have been impaled, eviscerated, decapitated, maimed, lacerated, who have bled out from internal injuries, suffered permanent head injury, received dozens of stitches, and have become alcoholics because they couldn't work any more. He peppered these stories throughout the three days of the workshop, just to keep things extra entertaining.

In the end, he inspired confidence and was a patient, kind teacher...I became fairly comfortable running the saw.  I gotta say it helped that he was standing right next to me to make sure I didn't wind up in the ER.  Thanks, Bill!


Watch as I fell a tree:

October Snowstorm

The day dawned cold and gray.  You could sense snow in the air, especially if you had just watched The Weather Channel.  Twelve inches?  Really?  "That's crazy...those weather guys always blow things out of proportion," thought the student farmers.  But, because it's always good to be prepared, their fearless leaders, Stephen and Tyson, scheduled an emergency vegetable harvest. After all, it was the last week of the season for the farmers' market and CSA distribution; it just wouldn't do to have the rutabagas buried under a foot of snow, snug and comfortable, yet inaccessible.

Things did not start well for student farmer Liz.  The flakes had just begun to fly when Stephen instructed her to start picking and bundling radishes.  Under normal circumstances, she thought that radishes were beautiful red orbs that would look as good on a Christmas tree as they would on a salad.  But today, picking them meant cold, wet, numb fingers and knees.  Manual dexterity was reduced to zero as the temperature plummeted and heavy snow began to pile up.

Next up: rutabagas. Now the snow was accumulating quickly. The task was to pull up every plant in the field, box it, and get it to the barn before the produce was buried alive.  What a site to see! A blur of white (snow), green (veggies), and brown (dirt) moving through the fields at record speed.  By the time the sun set, over 400 pounds of rutabagas had been harvested by the group of six.

Liz arrived home anticipating a hot shower and a warm meal.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans.  The weight and volume of fifteen inches of early season snow overwhelmed trees and power lines and the electricity went out. Little did she know that power wouldn't be restored until 72 hours later.

She experienced a small crisis of confidence and wondered to herself, "Am I hearty enough to be a farmer?  Has a student farmer ever died from hypothermia?" And most importantly, "What does a rutabaga taste like?"

Chase Hill Farm

Field trip!

I love field trips.  It takes me back to elementary school:  the zoo, the science museum, brown bag lunches.  Only now I don't need a permission slip from my mother.

Today we visited Chase Hill Farm, an organic dairy farm in Warwick that specializes in raw milk and artisan cheeses from grass-fed cows.  Mark Fellows, a second-generation dairy farmer, spent the morning with us explaining the history of the farm and how he is able to succeed as a small farmer.

This farm is self-reliant and intentional.  He keeps the dairy herd (a French breed called Normande) to about 25 and culls the rest for beef.  He practices rotational pasture grazing, moving his cows to fresh grass often twice daily.  His milking operation is seasonal and the cows are "dried out" in the winter, allowing him and his wife Jeanette, who handles cheese production, some breathing room in the colder months for a little R&R.  The cheesemaking operation, however, continues to generate income.

Because his cows are grass-fed, he spends virtually no money on feed.  He recently installed solar panels on the barn, which supply 70% of the farm's electricity.  He has started working with draft horses to power some of the farm's operations.  The by-product of cheese production, whey, is used to feed the pigs.  He is not interested in expanding or increasing production.  He is interested in making a high quality product and keeping it local.  He sells his products on the farm, in a few small retail stores, and at farmers' markets in western Mass and Vermont.  He says, "we're not rich, but the bills are paid and we have money in the bank."

Mark just purchased a giant horse treadmill, used by Amish farmers, which should generate enough power to run the milking equipment.  He enlisted our help to get the draft horses accustomed to the sound of the contraption so that they'll actually use it.  Our task was to simply walk on the treadmill.  It took about ten of us to even get it moving!

 

 

 

http://www.chasehillfarm.com  

                                                                                                              

Pizza Rules

Confession:  I've never made homemade pizza crust before.  That is, until today, when I watched and learned from my classmate Jason, who is competent and proficient in the kitchen.  I think I can now prepare this easily on my own.  Wowza...what a crowd pleaser!  The crew had been cutting down trees and burning brush all morning - very physical work - and they were amazingly hungry.  People actually shouted for joy upon entering the kitchen and looked at us lovingly.  It didn't hurt that I made an apple crisp for dessert.  Aah...comfort food.  For about a half an hour I felt a little like an Italian grandmother. Mangia! Mangia!

Recipe of the day #2

Pizza dough

1 cup warm water
1 tbsp dry baker's yeast (1 package)
1 tsp honey

1 tbsp sunflower oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 to 3 cups flour (1/2 whole wheat 

   and 1/2 white mixed together)

Cornmeal
 

Mix water, yeast, honey, oil, and salt, and let sit until bubbly. 

Add 2 1/2 cups flour and knead until smooth and even, adding 

more flour to dough if needed. Place in medium-sized bowl, cover, 

and allow to rise 1 hour in a warm place until doubled in size. 

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Sprinkle cornmeal on bottom of pan. 

Roll out dough on floured board and stretch dough to corners of pan, 

folding over edges for a rim.

At this point in recipe land, we added our own special farm ingredients: 

home-canned tomato sauce doctored up with garlic, onions, shallots, 

basil and oregano; just-harvested eggplant, red pepper, onion, broccoli, 

and cauliflour; black olives; and mozzarella and cheddar cheeses.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Wait for oohs and aahs.

Recipe of the Day

There are a lot of good cooks in this bunch of people.  It's particularly impressive when you have to prepare such large quantities of food.  I'm going to start documenting my favorites so that I can re-live the deliciousness and perhaps re-create some of them myself.


Recipe of the day #1

Green couscous

From 'Plenty' by Yotam Ottolenghi

A good-looking and even better-tasting side salad. It has strong flavors and is
extremely healthful but still feels light and comforting.

Serves 4
1 cup couscous
3/4 cup boiling water or vegetable stock
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cumin

Herb paste
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1 cup chopped cilantro
2 tbsp chopped tarragon
2 tbsp chopped dill
2 tbsp chopped mint
6 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup unsalted pistachios, toasted and roughly chopped
3 green onions, finely sliced
1 fresh green chile, finely sliced
1 1/4 cup arugula leaves, chopped

Place couscous in a large bowl and cover with boiling water or stock.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave for 10 minutes.  

Meanwhile, fry the onion in the olive oil on medium heat until 

golden and completely soft. Add the salt and cumin and mix well. 

Leave to cool slightly.

To make the herb paste, place all ingredients in a food processor
and blitz until smooth.

Add the herb paste to the couscous and mix everything together with a fork
to fluff it up. Now add the cooked onion, the pistachios, green onions, 

green chile and arugula and gently mix. Serve at room temperature.

Multiply times six if you are living on a farm.  

I couldn't find the 'blitz' setting on the blender...maybe you can.

        

      

Day of Wonder

Where else can you get a crash course on the use of power tools in the morning and then learn to make cheese in the afternoon?

Olivier took us through the finer details of the operation of the circular saw and the "Sawzall" this morning.  He even gave us little welcome packages...earphones, safety glasses, and an enormous measuring tape. We'll be using these tools for various activities throughout the year...timber framing, barn repair, and other projects.  There's something very deeply satisfying about cutting through a large piece of lumber with a loud, dangerous power tool.  I've never even considered the possibility of being able to acquire and be competent in construction skills. Hmm...maybe it's time to rethink that supposition.

Cheesemaking, aka dairy transformation, is an amazing process.  It's really not unlike hanging out in the chemistry lab for the afternoon.  You add cultures and coagulant to heated milk and something rather magical happens.  The science behind it is intriguing to me and I'll have to do some investigating.  We made queso fresco, whole milk ricotta, yogurt, kefir, and chevre.  Emily, who keeps goats, horses, and chickens on her farm, was a most excellent teacher.  And, she sings to her goats as she's herding or milking them.  Lucky goats!

Good Evening

Today we met our dairy cow.  Her name is Evening.  As a group we went to pick her up at Sentinel Elm, the School's other farm where the kids' programs are based.  Evening is a brown Jersey cow with a black face and eyes...those eyes...that are huge and dark and beautiful.

Is it bad to fall in love with a dairy cow?  We walked her back down the road to Maggie's Farm, where she'll stay with us for a few months while we learn to milk her and take care of her.  She is so sweet, and apparently her milk is, too.

Right now she's not too happy in her new, temporary abode.  She seems to be missing her fellow cows and occasionally glances up wistfully towards home as she chomps on the pasture's tall grass.

Week Numero Uno

The days have been intense.  The learning experience on the farm is about breadth, not depth, which means that I'm dipping my toes into the vast pond of organic farming.  After five days, it feels as if my brain is about to explode.  In a good way.  The highlights?  It's a toss-up between making breakfast (frittata, zucchini/cranberry muffins, oatmeal) for twenty people with one of my classmates and harvesting hundreds of pounds of potatoes with the group.  Digging up potatoes is a trip.  You kneel, sink your hands into the cool, loose dirt, and find little hidden treasures called Russets, fingerlings, and two other varieties with romantic-sounding names that I can't remember.

Generally speaking, our days will contain some sort of combination of hands-on farmwork, lectures/didactic, and field trips/site visits to other farms and places of interest in addition to daily chores. If I had a billion dollars, I'd send everyone to farm school.

Here's a sample schedule for the week:

Monday

7 am: breakfast

7:30 am: field work - bean, broccoli, Swiss chard, eggplant and mesclun greens harvest

12 noon: lunch

1:15 pm: field work

Tuesday

8 am: breakfast

8:45 am: fence building workshop with the focus on electric fencing and lots of discussion about Joules, amps, volts, resistance, and general consternation about how painful it is to get zapped

12 noon: lunch

1:15 pm: forest ecology walk

Wednesday

8 am: breakfast

8:45 am: animal orientation - pigs, cows, chickens, sheep

12 noon: lunch

1:15 pm: orientation to the kitchen garden; apple picking; seed planting of winter greens

5:00 pm: Community Life meeting and dinner

Thursday

8 am: breakfast

8:45 am: fence building practicum

12 noon: lunch

1:15 pm: field work

Friday

8 am: breakfast

8:45 am: orientation to daily chores; scary video about tractor safety

12 noon: lunch

1:15 pm: field work - potato digging

4:30 pm: start daily chores

Next week, the beginning and end of our days will be "bookended" by chores, which means that the work day will be longer.  The faculty has eased us into this schedule and has been doing all of the farm chores this week.  Next week I'm assigned to house chores with two other classmates...sweeping, mopping, laundry, cooking breakfast, taking out the trash, feeding the cats, bringing in the Boston Globe from the mailbox, etc.  Each week will be different...other chores involve the care of each group of animals - pigs, chickens, cows and sheep (oh my!).

Our days revolve around food...harvesting, preparing, cooking and eating.  I'm not a great cook, but I can feel the stirrings of interest and excitement around preparing food for large numbers.  I am so struck by the idea of determining your meal plan based on what's currently growing in the garden.  Do you want eggs for breakfast?  No problem...the chicken coop's just out back.  Have a hankering for eggplant Parmesan?  Well I'll be...we just picked some yesterday!

Favorite aesthetically-pleasing food of the week: the mini Mexican cucumber.  Do these look familiar?

Mini Culinary School

This weekend, I learned the right way to cut up a whole chicken, properly sharpen a knife, render beef fat into lard, make beans/rice/greens, frittata, and pulled pork for 25 people, make hot sauce from fresh chilis, pan fry chicken raised on the farm, pan sear a pork shoulder, poach eggs (it's true, I've never done that before), make sour kraut, cure pork jowls into guanciale, and prepare chicken stock from scratch.  I'd like to tell you that I could repeat these activities on my own, but I'm skeptical.  Chef Christina is amazing.  She can multi-task like nobody's business.  She can talk in detail about a wide variety of cooking techniques while simultaneously directing us to chop, gather, soak, wash, stir, grate, pour, pound, and knead.  She is not shy about using lard, butter, or salt.  She often rates food dishes on the "scale of awesomeness."  I love that.  Did you know that to poach an egg it is best to stir the water and "create a vortex" in which to drop the egg?  And to cure a pork jowl you must massage it often and "show it a lot of love?"  What a great time!  Thanks, Christina.

First Day!

My month of leisure time has come to an end.  I've been galavanting around Cape Cod and Austin and making day trips back to the Pioneer Valley to see friends.  That's okay because, OMG, I'm now officially a student farmer!

Today was packed with activity and information. Breakfast. Introductions. Tours. Lunch. Digging in the dirt, harvesting potatoes. Meeting the animals: chickens, cows, horses, pigs, goats, and turkeys. The turkeys are scheduled for "processing" at the end of this month...I decided not to bond with them.  And finally, a barbeque, with most of the food coming from the farm.  I'm not much of a beef person, but grass-fed burgers are surely a gift from the gods.

There are twelve of us student-farmers...I'm keeping company with some amazing people. Just as I suspected, I'm the senior member of the group.  The faculty is full of energy and very warm and welcoming.  This weekend we'll be getting two days of cooking classes.  If I had to come up with a title for the cooking class, it might be: Don't Panic! Learn to cook for 25 people, make it tasty and nutritious, and live to tell about it.

A Bit o' History

I'm having trouble saying the word 'Athol.'  I'm afraid that a hush will fall over the room and I'll be banished from respectable society.  What is its origin, anyway?  If I know this, then maybe I'll get over my irrational fear.  Or maybe they can just change the name back to 'Pequoiag,' after the Indian tribe that lived in this area before the 1700's.  A much better choice, in my opinion.  According to a local source (my landlord),  a group of people recently tried to get the name changed, but their efforts were unsuccessful.  So we're stuck with 'Athol' for awhile.

So anyhoo,  Athol was settled in the 1760's by a group of 5 families of Scottish descent.  The area reminded them of their home in Blair Atholl, Scotland, and the name means "pleasant place."

There you go.  I'm living in a pleasant place.  My peeps in the Pioneer Valley warned me that I was moving to a wasteland...no restaurants, no live music or culture, lots of poverty, and generally speaking not much to do.   It's true that resources are more limited...it's rural...but this area has a lot of breathtaking natural beauty and more than its share of local color and flavor.  Here's a pic from my first hike at Tully Lake, about a 10 minute drive from my new abode:

Pretty awesome, huh?

Athol has suffered the same fate as many other New England factory towns, which were booming in the 1800's and well into the 20th century.  A variety of factors led to their decline, and I believe that Athol got hit harder than most.  It's off the beaten path and more isolated both in terms of geography and access to transportation.  It's nicknamed "Tool Town" - the largest employer is the L.S. Starrett Company, which makes precision tools for machinists and tool and die makers.  My next task is to determine why this company survives and thrives, while many others did not.  But that's for another day.

Moving Day

Today is moving day.

The transitions have come fast and furious.  I put my house on the market in May...it sold with dizzying speed.  Which meant that I had to move out in June and sublet an apartment for the summer.

I left my heart on Stanford Street

My sweet cat Samantha died in June.  I adopted her the week I started medical school sixteen years ago, and she had been my constant companion all through my training and into practice.  Interesting that she chose to leave at this time in my life!  Almost as if she felt that her task of taking care of me through all these doctorin' years was complete. Boy I miss her and her lovely, loyal, sometimes cantankerous nature.

Thursday was my last day of work.  I didn't think I would cry, but I walked into my office to find my desk completely covered with gifts and cards, and the waterworks commenced.

And Holyoke!  I've made some amazing friends there.  It's a place that I've fallen in love with, and I'll miss it dearly.

So today I head off to my new diggs in Athol.  I don't know a soul there, but I know that I soon will.  New challenges...new experiences...vámanos!

Farming 101

Pinch me.  Am I really doing this?  Am I really leaving my medical practice for an organic farming apprenticeship?  Yes.  Do I know what I'm getting myself into?  Sort of.  Am I having any second thoughts?  Nope.

How, might you ask, am I preparing for farm life?   I have a summer reading list: "The Dirty Life" by Kristin Kimball; "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver; and "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.  And a whole list of resources that people have been enthusiastically providing me since I announced my intentions.  Plus a pair of wellies.  All of this should adequately prepare me for the farm, right?  Right.

When I say "Farming 101" I am not kidding.  The extent of my farming experience consists of raised beds of tomatoes, herbs and wildflowers in my backyard in the 'burbs of Holyoke:

My biggest worry, of all things, is being cold.  I don't like being cold.  But, I take solace in the words of a friend: "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing."  I intend to take this piece of information to heart and buy out the fleece-lined outerwear inventory at the Duluth Trading Company.  Oh, and I admit that I'm a little anxious about chopping wood.  My brother tried to teach me to use an axe last year.  I timidly brought it down on a piece of firewood, only to have it bounce off and hit me in the shin.  Never fear, I wasn't maimed, just bruised and a tad embarrassed.

Here we go!

The Farm School: http://www.farmschool.org/index.html